Standard Chatered's Zodia Raised $36M as Banks Embrace Cryptocurrency

A Standard Chartered-backed custody called Zodia Custody was able to raise at least $36 million in a new series. The series is called A funding round. A Japenese Financial conglomerate, SBI Holdings led the fundraising and has successfully become Zodia’s second-largest shareholder. Though Standard Chartered is the first-largest shareholder.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Zodia Custody, A Standard Chartered-backed custody, was able to raise at least $36 million in a new series.
• Zodia recently expanded its business in Japan through a joint venture with SBI Holdings.

Before that round of fundraising, Zodia was backed solely by Standard Chartered and Northern Trust. While Standard Chartered owned a 90% stake in the firm. Even after the funding, Standard remains on the top.

Julian Sawyer the CEO of Zodia stated that after a subsidiary reaches a certain level of growth it is typical for Standard Chartered’s venture strategy to raise external funds. He further mentioned that Zodiac’s strategy is to be bank-backed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there has to be only one bank involved.

Use-case for the funds

The Standard Chartered’s Zodia Custody now plans to use the funds they raised of $36M merely to expand its geographic reach beyond Europe and Asia and to support more cryptocurrencies which may also include staked Ether.

As Sawyer stated that Ethereum staking is a way to gain rewards for ‘staking’ your assets. Following the recent changes to the Ethereum protocol, there might be an increase in these services in the future.

However, the company intends to avoid the United States due to regulatory uncertainty. Zodia recently expanded its business in Japan through a joint venture with SBI Holdings. This was targeted at institutional investors.

The entire thing will be owned 51% by the SBI and the rest of the 49% will go into Zodia custody. Standard Chartered originally announced its plans to provide institutional custody for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin in 2020 and later they launched Zodia in 2021.